Another day in paradise.

Well, kinda.

Tuesday morning we awoke before sunrise for yet another perfect day – clear skies above, cloud formations on the horizon (where they belong). On one side the sky turned to molten gold fading into blue, while on the other salmon pink faded into indigo. As the light levels increased we discovered a troop of monkeys ensconced in a tree directly opposite, getting up to all kinds of monkey business. ;-) Cameras came out, spectators leaned on rails and we greeted the sun along with the locals. 

 

I managed to get an invite to go fishing with the younger guys after sun-up but before breakfast. Fish of interest were the bream (not like bream in the UK, but some kind of large cichlid) and the tigerfish, which looks a little like a bass, but with outrageous teeth. That first morning the guys managed mostly small stuff, but with a couple of decent bream and one tigerfish, though I blanked. The larger bream and tigerfish were retained to eat later.

After breakfast we motored out to the middle to refill the water tanks and flush waste (:p). The water for showers had run out, and the water supply used was.... lake water. Don't think about where the waste tanks had just been emptied! Fortunately there were very few other boats around, and so one can trust in a mixture of dilution and rapid bio-degradation to sort things out.

Before getting to the boat we had been repeatedly warned that Kariba was full of crocodiles, and that they were known to actively swim across the lake, so that even swimming in deep water in the middle of the lake was not safe. This was clearly intended as 'for information only' since as soon as we were a mile or so out, everyone under the age of 30 plus this 51 year old donned swimming costumes and leapt off the upper deck into the water, in most cases repeatedly and sometimes with back-flips. Crazy. The water was pleasantly cool, less murky than the sea off the south coast of England (probably cleaner too) and smacked good & hard when leapt on from a height of about 10 feet. Darn, I'm getting old these days.

After our dip we motored around to another bay, where we found hippo, elephant, various birds. Games were played, food eaten (organised with military precision by Marleen and cooked by Lovemore) drinks drunk, games of cards and pictionary played. The sun repeated the previous night's trick of melting across the sky while turning clouds on the opposite side pink in sympathy.